Scottish Brides Read online

  Love blooms where the

  heather grows ...

  Christina Dodd

  Stephanie Laurens

  Julia Quinn

  Karen Ranney

  SCOTTISH BRIDES

  A land of legend and wild beauty—of clans, lairds, honor and passion—there’s something about Scotland that stirs our hearts to romance. Now, in one incomparable volume, four of your favorite authors present stirring tales of hearts won and weddings-to-be, featuring a quartet of unforgettable heroines about to discover the rapture of love in a world as untamed as the men they will one day marry.

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  CHRISTINA

  DODD

  STEPHANIE

  LAURENS

  JULIA

  QUINN

  KAREN

  RANNEY

  SCOTTISH

  BRIDES

  Contents

  Under the Kilt

  One

  “Andra didn’t tell you about the marriage kilt?” Lady. . .

  Two

  Andra didn’t quite hiss when she saw Hadden’s broad. . .

  Three

  Hadden could scarcely contain his rage as he followed. . .

  Four

  Hadden kept his legs between Andra’s, using his knees. . .

  Five

  The sound of her laughter softened his ire and irresistibly. . .

  Six

  Grasping the handle on the trapdoor, Andra tugged. . .

  Seven

  With both hands on her waist, Hadden lifted Andra. . .

  Eight

  Hadden was an ordinary man with ordinary needs. . .

  A Note from Christina Dodd

  Rose in Bloom

  One

  “What the devil are you doing here?”. . .

  Two

  Duncan’s prediction proved accurate; the next day . . .

  Three

  Rose began the next day determined to keep her distance . . .

  Four

  Clarissa retired immediately after luncheon, apparently . . .

  STEPHANIE LAURENS

  Gretna Greene

  One

  Margaret Pennypacker had chased her brother half-. . .

  Two

  Their truce lasted all of two minutes. Margaret wasn’t . . .

  Three

  Margaret yelped in surprise as she slid through the . . .

  Four

  The rain had subsided, but the damp night air was a . . .

  Five

  His lips brushed against hers slowly, in the barest of . . .

  Six

  Margaret came awake the following morning just the . . .

  JULIA QUINN

  The Glenlyon Bride

  One

  “I’ll not marry the witch,” Lachlan said. . .

  Two

  It was raining, a very fine mist that ended almost as . . .

  Three

  He had thought about her all day, this woman with . . .

  Four

  Janet slept heavily and woke late. She had crept to . . .

  Five

  She could not wait for darkness; it could not come . . .

  Six

  The light of the full moon had made the path easier to . . .

  Seven

  She looked so happy standing there with a smile on . . .

  Eight

  Not even Harriet could spoil her mood. Nor could Jeremy, . . .

  Nine

  Lachlan whirled her in such a tight circle that the . . .

  Ten

  His fingers threaded through the hair at her temples; . . .

  Eleven

  He dismounted before he reached the house, then . . .

  Twelve

  “Who is he, Janet?” . . .

  Thirteen

  “What do you mean, she’s not here?” Lachlan said . . .

  Fourteen

  He had plans, wonderful plans that would somehow . . .

  KAREN RANNEY

  Books by Christina Dodd

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Under the Kilt

  Christina Dodd

  One

  Scotland, 1805

  “Andra didn’t tell you about the marriage kilt?” Lady Valéry sipped the wickedly strong whiskey and relished the warmth it spread through her aged veins. “My heavens, what did you do to offend? The MacNachtans always drag out that marriage kilt to show everyone, whether they wish it or not.”

  The fire warmed the study, the candles lit the darkened corners, the clock ticked on the mantel, and Hadden sat, long legs stretched out before him, the very portrait of masculine power and grace.

  The very image of offended virility.

  Lady Valéry hid a grin in her goblet. The boy—he was thirty-one, but she considered him a boy—did not take rejection well.

  “Andra MacNachtan is unreasonable.” He scowled into his goblet. “A black-headed, noodle-brained woman without a care for anyone but herself.”

  Lady Valéry waited, but he said nothing more. He only gulped at his whiskey, his fourth since dinner and three more than the usually temperate drinker ever consumed.

  “Yes. Well.” She returned to her scheme. “The marriage kilt is exactly your kind of tradition. There’s a ragged old plaid cloth that’s reputed to bring good luck to the newly-weds if it’s wrapped around their shoulders . . .” She paused artfully for effect. “No, wait, let me think . . . if they kiss the sporran . . . no, perhaps it was something about wifely obedience. If I could remember the tale, I would tell you, and you could copy it into your treatise. But I’m an old lady; my memory’s not what it used to be—”

  Hadden lifted his bloodshot blue eyes to glare at her.

  Perhaps that was laying it on a little too thick. Hastily, she abandoned that tack and, in a brisk, no-nonsense tone, said, “And I was never interested in that old-fashioned balderdash. I remember the ‘good old days’—smoking fires, galloping clap, gin slums. No, give me my modern conveniences. You young folks can go poking around and call those days romantic and worthy of note, but I don’t.”

  “It’s not just your youth I’m recording, Your Grace, much though you would like to believe that.”

  Surly and sarcastic, she noted, his usual state since his return from Castle MacNachtan almost two months ago.

  “It’s a whole way of life. Since Culloden, Scotland has changed. The old ways that have existed since William Wallace and Robert the Bruce are disappearing without a trace.” He straightened his shoulders, leaned forward intently. “I want to record those fragile fragments of culture before they are gone forever. If I don’t record them, no one will.”

  Lady Valéry watched him with satisfaction. He’d been this emphatic and enthusiastic almost from the first moment he’d arrived at her Scottish estate, a skinny, frightened nine-year-old. He’d taken to the open spaces and gray mists of the Highlands. He’d grown tall and hearty as he roamed the glens and braes, and he’d discovered in the clans and the ancient ways of life a continuity his own existence lacked.

  Not that his sister hadn’t made a home for him—she had—but nothing could substitute for two parents and a place to call his own.

  Lady Valéry had hoped, when she sent him to Castle Mac-Nachtan, he would find his place there.

  Instead, he’d come back silen
t and grumpy, brooding in a manner quite unlike his normal personable self.

  Once Lady Valéry had diagnosed the malady that vexed him, she had resolved to set all to rights, and her plan, as always, was working perfectly.

  “I understand now. You’re tactfully telling me you’re not interested in the MacNachtans’ wedding kilt because it’s not important.” She set her goblet down with a thump. “I don’t blame you a bit. It is an obscure legend, and rather absurd, and the MacNachtans are a dying clan. That girl, that Andra, is the last of them as far as I know. Yes, you’re right.” She acted as if he had spoken. “If you don’t record their history before that clan fades away, it will be of no consequence.”

  Hadden’s drink halted halfway to his mouth, and his fingers tightened on the cut-glass sides of his goblet. “Castle Mac-Nachtan is two hard days of riding from here,” he muttered.

  “That’s true,” Lady Valéry acknowledged. It had taken her courier two days to get there, one day to search out Andra’s housekeeper and get an answer to her letter, and two days to get back.

  “The roads are mud. The crofters are poor, the castle’s disintegrating, and it was none too fine a castle to begin with. And Andra MacNachtan is destitute and proud as the devil in spite of it, and so vain of her honored Scottish ancestry that she can’t see what’s right before her nose.”

  Lady Valéry smiled at Hadden, knowing she had well and truly set the hook. “So, dear boy, a noodle-brained woman like Andra MacNachtan is of no consequence?”

  He stood, over six feet tall, a blond giant, handsome, irresistible, and so bristling with irritation at Lady Valéry that he almost forgot his displeasure with Andra. “She damned well shouldn’t be.”

  “When will you leave?”

  “Tomorrow morning.” Standing, he tossed his whiskey into the fire and watched the flames blaze up. “And the tale of this marriage kilt had better be true, Your Grace, for if I go all that way to make a fool of myself, I’ll hop a ship to India and make another fortune, and you’ll not see me for many a long day.”

  “You’d break an old lady’s heart?”

  “Not if she’s a truthful old lady. Now if you will excuse me, Your Grace, I will go pack.”

  She watched him stride out, dynamic, overbearing, and so virile he made her long to be fifty years younger. “Oh, I am truthful,” she murmured to herself. “About the marriage kilt, at least.”

  Andra stared at the still-dripping end of the pipe that carried water from the well to the kitchen. It was a miracle it hadn’t broken before, and she’d run out of miracles about two months ago.

  “It’s created a dreadful flood,” Douglas added unnecessarily.

  Andra lifted her foot out of the three inches of water sub-merging the floor of the subterranean dungeon she euphemistically called the wine cellar. “I noticed.” She noticed more than that. When the pipe had broken, it had sprayed the barrels of salted meat and soaked the bins of barley and rye. An almost-empty barrel containing the last of their wine listed drunkenly from side to side.

  The Clan MacNachtan had reached its lowest ebb, and she had no idea how to raise it from this depth of poverty and despair—or, rather, how to raise herself, for she was the last of the family. She wanted to give up—she would have already given up—except for Douglas, sixty years old and really quite good at repairing misfortune after he’d finished bellyaching; and her housekeeper, Sima, the only mother she’d had since her own had died when she was eleven; and the cook and Kenzie, the half-blind ostler; and the crofters and all the folk who depended on her to keep them safe from madmen and Englishmen.

  And when she’d done just that, refused to agree to a crazy Englishman’s contemptible demand, they’d acted disappointed or troubled or irritated according to their natures. As if she, the last of the MacNachtans, should actually marry a lowlander. Bad enough that she had—

  “Mistress, how are we goin’ t’ pump all this water out o’ here?”

  She took a quivering breath but couldn’t answer. She didn’t know how they were going to pump the water out.

  “An’ how do ye want me t’ fix the pipe?”

  She didn’t know that, either. She just knew that life, always lonely, always hard, had recently grown so difficult that she didn’t know how she could bear to continue to lift her head off the pillow in the mornings.

  Plucking the sweaty kerchief off her head, she used it to wipe her neck. She’d been helping boil the laundry in the kitchen when the water suddenly stopped; she looked like the lowest, poorest crofter who inhabited the ancient Mac-Nachtan lands, and she ached in every bone. She would hate to have anyone see her like this, certainly not—

  “That guid young man Mr. Fairchild would know what to do,” Douglas said. “Seemed t’ me he knew a lot about plumbin’.”

  Andra turned on Douglas so quickly, she made waves. “What do you mean by that?”

  Her steward looked surprised and exorbitantly, suspiciously innocent. “Why, nothing, but that he seemed knowledgeable about every little thing. Even pipes.”

  She closed her eyes to shut out the sight of the wizened old man’s amusement. She shouldn’t have reacted to the sound of Hadden’s name, but Douglas had been nagging at her ever since . . .

  “He’s not here, is he? So we’ll have to do without him.” She kept her tone level and her voice soft, two things she had had trouble doing these last weeks.

  Douglas nodded approvingly. “At least fer a change ye’re not shriekin’ like a kelpie.”

  And Andra felt her ready irritation rise. She turned her back, ostensibly to study the pipe, and found her attention caught by the true scope of this disaster. An entire section had burst, ancient copper worn thin by a hundred and fifty years of water flowing through it.

  Burst. Broken. Worn out. Like everything else in Castle MacNachtan. She and everyone under her care were living in a crumbling relic, and day by day matters were getting worse. Everyone looked to Andra for salvation, but what could a twenty-six-year-old spinster do to repair stone or to grow crops?

  Behind her, she heard the patter of Sima’s footsteps down the stairs and the swish of Douglas’s stride through the water. She heard the whisper of their voices, and she swallowed hard to clear the lump from her throat. A lump she experienced far too often these days.

  “Mistress,” Sima called, and her voice sounded softer and kinder than it had for many a day. “Dinna fash yerself about this now. Ye’ve had a hard day. Come on up t’ yer chamber. I’ve fixed ye a nice, warm bath.”

  “A bath?” To Andra’s shame, her voice wobbled. Resting her hand on her throat, she steadied herself before she spoke again. “It isn’t even time for supper.”

  “It will be by the time ye’ve bathed, and it’s a guid supper we’re plannin’, too. Some o’ Mary’s potato scones, hot off the grill, and a wee chicken in the pot. Maybe I’ll make yer favorite.”

  Later, Andra realized the chicken should have offered her the clue. The only time Sima usually allowed a chicken to be killed was if someone were sick, or if the chicken was.

  But at that moment, all Andra wanted was warm water and the illusion of comfort. “Cock-a-leekie soup?” Turning, she stared at the spare, iron-faced woman who had been her nurse.

  “Aye, the very same,” Sima assured her.

  So Andra allowed herself to be herded upstairs to her bed-chamber, bathed with the single, hoarded bar of French, rose-scented soap. Her sole pair of white silk stockings was offered and donned, as were her garters with the lacy flower by the bow. Her fresh white petticoats rustled as Sima tied them around her waist, and she raised her arms as Sima slipped her best gown of rose dimity over her head. Her length of straight black hair was coiled atop her head in the most elegant style Sima knew, and, as the finishing touch, Sima wrapped a Belgian lace shawl around Andra’s shoulders.

  Andra permitted all this without protest, imagining that she was being cosseted like a child.

  In truth, she was being trussed like a sacrif
icial lamb.

  And she realized it when she walked into the flame-lit dining chamber with its intimate, linen-draped table set with two places, and saw him.

  Hadden Fairchild, scholar, Englishman—and her first, her only, her lover.

  Two

  Andra didn’t quite hiss when she saw Hadden’s broad shoulders propped against the mantle, but she allowed herself a little puff of exasperation mixed with defensiveness. He stood there, showing no signs of the hard journey, impeccably dressed in a jacket, trousers, cravat and waistcoat bearing the stamp of London sophistication. The man himself, big, braw and hearty, gathered the fire’s glow and magnified the light in the gleam of his blond hair, the warmth of his golden skin, and the luminescence of his heather-blue eyes.

  Damn him. Did he have to challenge her with his stance, his vigor, and his obvious ability to make himself at home in her castle?

  Sima put her hand in the middle of Andra’s back and gave her a push, and Andra stumbled into the room and almost fell to her knees.

  “Please,” he said, his tone frightfully superior and his accent very English, “you don’t have to kneel. A simple curtsy will serve.”

  Automatically she dropped into the common Highland intonation she hoped would annoy him. “Ye’re insufferable.”

  “Aye.” He could do a Scottish accent even broader than hers. “As bad as a lassie wi’ no more guid sense than Fairie Puck.”

  He looked as if he should be more ornamental than useful, but he could do everything better than she could. Change a wheel, deliver a babe, dig a well, soothe a child’s fears, write a letter, love a woman past any qualm . . . no doubt he could also repair a pipe. But she, Andra MacNachtan of the High-land MacNachtans, didn’t have to stand here and have her face rubbed in his endless, exasperating competence.